Monday, April 14, 2014

Last Friday, Marvel Studios came down to film a scene at the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park, Brockley in South East London. My partner and I were walking down Brockley Road when we stumbled upon a film crew filming "After Party". The Rivoli Ballroom is no stranger to film - it has featured in Doctor Who and the Muppets Most Wanted, but this one was big. We could tell by the twenty of so trucks that were lining up on Brockley Road and Marnock Road. Curiously a couple crew members had shirts with Guardians of the Galaxy printed on it.

As the filming of the Guardians of the Galaxy has already wrapped up and is currently in post production, the only logical conclusion was that (OMG, this was when my jaws dropped when realisation hit me), they were a Marvel Studios film crew filming the next Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero movie - Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron! With crews and visitors in t-shirts bearing Captain America's logo and Converse's Chuck Taylor All-Star logo (you know with the big five pointed star in the middle, you didn't need to be a genius to figure it out. The symbolism was strong. It all hinted that whatever was going on in the ballroom had something to do with Captain America.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

There is no point. I have a life, and my life is worth more than £50. You can have that £50 you earned dishonestly, but you could have had so much more if you worked to make this right from the beginning.

I could have given you more than just £50 but because you wanted the money the quick and dishonest way, I will be leaving you in November.

We could have a long term relationship where you will eventually earn thousands of pounds from me. But you really wanted that £50, and that £50 will cost you. Have it, I shan't fight you any more.

Unless you bill me of things I did not agree of again, this will be the last of it. The next time you will hear from me will be in October when I give my one month notice to be freed of your tyranny.

Well if you thought our war against TalkTalk has ended, you are sadly mistaken. Upon checking my last bill with TalkTalk, I found that they applied an engineer charge of £50.00. This was done without my consent.

If you remember, TalkTalk was supposed to connect us to the internet in November, but failed to do so under terms of the contract. After persisting for a week they finally relented and agreed to send an engineer to connect us. In my calls to TalkTalk, they never once told me they would apply a call out charge - and why should they? They fucked it up first.

So I sent them a stern e-mail questioning this frankly illegal charge. Here is their condescending reply.

Thank you for contacting TalkTalk about your bill.

I am very sorry to hear of your recent disappointment with our services. We assure you that customer satisfaction is our top priority, and we want our services to reflect that principle. I would like to apologise for any inconvenience this matter may have caused you.

I have checked your account and would like to confirm you that you have been charged £50.00 for the Engineer visit on 27th of November 2013. Engineer did not found any fault by attending the premises. Hence the charge is applicable to all the customers under the T&C acceptance.

I would love to give you the full refund of £50.00 but trust me I can't. As everything is not in our hand. I've checked your account and there are no notes to confirm that you've had a free Engineer visit at your property. So we are unable to credit you for the Engineer charge on your account.

Please, accept my sincere apologies.

Thanks for contacting TalkTalk.

What a bunch of liars. An engineer came to fix a problem with TalkTalk after not connecting us for more than one week, and not once in my phone call with their customer service was I told that I had to pay if there were no faults found (which is frankly a lie, as we weren't connected for one week after we were supposed to go online).

When I called TalkTalk in October to move house, TalkTalk promised to reconnect me for free, and thus booked a free OpenReach engineer to come. This engineer failed to come and connect us. In fact, I still have a text by OpenReach claiming they didn't need to visit our property to connect us).

Now £50 is not much, but if TalkTalk thinks they can get away with secretly charging me £50, then who knows how many people they have scammed. I imagine they prey on elderly people who has no motivation to fight their dishonest predatory practice.

Our contract ends in November 2014 - that date can't come soon enough. In the meantime I urge you all not to sign up with them. They will do all they can to scam you. If you think Ofcom will put a stop on this practice you will be mistaken - these telecom companies have Ofcom in their pockets.